1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an universal hard disk cartridge, and particularly the present invention to provide easily changeable hard drive from the universal hard disk cartridge, and not necessary to open the external hard drive housing.
2. Description of Related Art
Data storage devices primary fall into two categories: the removable storage and hard disk storage. These two types of data storage devices offer different advantages depending on the type of applications.
In the removable storage, the storage media can be replaced as more storage space is needed. Cost of the media is relatively inexpensive. But the data transfer rate for removable storage devices in general are much slower than hard disk storage. Thus the removable storage is great for data archiving. To access the data stored on a removable storage media, the computer must have a compatible drive that can read the data from the media. Example, a CDRW drive or CD-ROM drive is needed to access the data on a CDRW media, a DVD drive is needed to access data on a DVD media, a 240 MB-ZIP drive is needed to access data on a 240 MB ZIP media. As a result, in order for a computer to access data on a variety of removable media, it must be equipped with various types of drives.
In the case of hard disk storage, the media and the drive are integrated together. With this design, the data transfer rate for hard drive is much faster than the removable storage. Thus hard disk is great for storing program files, for storing data that are accessed all the time and for streaming video application. Since the hard drive and the storage media are all integrated in one unit, the computer can access the data stored in a hard drive by connecting up the hard disk controller cable and the power cable from inside a computer to the hard drive. But this way of connecting a hard drive to a computer usually requires opening up the computer and technical skill.
External hard drive solves the problem of connecting a drive to a computer without opening up the computers. The external hard drives attach to a computer via one of the common I/O ports on a computer: USB, Firewire or PCMCIA. Since all the external hard drives are constructed with an enclosure to house the hard drive and the interface electronics. The additional cost of the housing and interface electronics make the external hard drive much more expensive than an internal IDE drive. So when an external hard drive capacity is used up, the user will have to purchase another external hard drive in order to have more data storage capacity. In addition, the external hard drive with this traditional design also limits its use to a single interface. If you have an external USB hard drive, a computer that has no USB port will not be able to use the hard drive.
The invention in this patent, called xe2x80x9cUniversal Hard Disk Cartridgexe2x80x9d, also refer to as UHDC in this patent, significantly improves the cost and flexibility of the external hard drive. The UHDC design also reduce the overall size to almost the size of the hard drive itself. With this invention, users can conveniently add and remove hard drive from the UHDC as if the hard drive is a removable storage media. When the hard drive capacity is filled up, it can be easily removed from the UHDC and replaced with a new hard drive of any capacity, similar to ejecting or removing the floppy media of a floppy drive. The Universal Hard Disk Cartridge is designed with a standard MC-36 connector so that it can be connected to any IO ports of any computing devices via an interface cable with the appropriate interface electronics.
The primary object of the present invention is to provide a cartridge, namely Universal Hard Disk Cartridge (UHDC), which enable to improve in large-scaled of cost reduction and assembly flexibility of external hard disk; also minimize the dimension of external hard disk size to the size of hard disk per se. According to the present invention, the users can easily add or remove the hard disk from UHDC as they have done in CDRW, floppy and other removable storage devices. When the space of hard disk is fully occupied, it can be easily removed from the UHDC and replace with a new one. Furthermore, said UHDC has a MC-36 connector which can connect to any I/O port of PC through proper interface device.